


I'll Crawl Home To Her

by cecedotpng



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of being underweight, POV Vriska Serket, Title from a Hozier Song, bug trolls, i don't need That in my life, no epilogue au, tavros is mentioned, terezi takes care of her gf, vriska comes home, vriska hasnt taken good care of herself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 13:11:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18717748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecedotpng/pseuds/cecedotpng
Summary: Years after Terezi gives up on finding her, Vriska returns to the one she loves.





	I'll Crawl Home To Her

She thinks if she stops walking she may never move again.

It would be very easy to just lay down in the dirt for a while, to rest her eyes as she hasn't been able to for all these sweeps. But Vriska knows that if Terezi is still alive, there will be time enough for that. Assuming she even wants to see her again, that is. She hasn’t seen or even talked to any of her friends in sweeps. She’s even gone through her adult molt since the last time. It’s normally a thing to be celebrated. A troll’s skin becomes hard, chitinous, and nearly black. They become taller and more muscular, and their eyes and hair get tinted with their blood color. They become fit and virile, perfectly suited for extravagant space journeys and sweeps of fueling the mothergrub with genetic material. Or at least, that’s how it used to be. She doesn’t know if Kanaya ever hatched another grub, and there are no more colonization efforts now that Alternia is gone.

Alternia. She thinks of her first home for a while. Her memories are starting to blur. The strange plants that grew near the entrance to her childhood hive, what color were they? They might have been blue. Vriska thinks she might have preferred them that way. But maybe they were green. Maybe they were purple. Her memories of home are like that more and more now. She remembers the big parts, like her FLARPing days and what her lusus looked like, but the finer details are a bit confusing. She thinks she remembers her lusus losing an eye to a particularly feisty meal, but she isn’t sure anymore.

Now that her planet is gone, she wonders where home is now. She couldn’t make herself follow her friends here to this new paradise planet. She couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t seen terrible things, that she hadn’t _done_ terrible things. She thought she would find the answer out in space. Quiet contemplation had never been something she enjoyed, but if everyone else was trying new things, she may as well, too. When John and everybody else had reached their long sought-after prize, she had declined to go with them, and promised to meet them there when she was ready. She was ready after a few months of being out there alone, but she refused to let herself believe that. She couldn’t face what she had done, and she didn’t expect her friends to, either. After about a sweep she broke down and turned to go home to them, but couldn’t find where that was anymore.

For such a long time Vriska looked for Earth C, that new home they made, that happy ending they bled and died for. And subconsciously, she thinks she looked for Terezi too, tried to hone in on the girl she had called friend and sister. They’d done so many awful, horrible things to each other. She forgave Terezi a long time ago. After all, her lost body parts had been restored after she ascended to god tier. She didn’t mind not having them, really. She kind of liked having special glasses and a sweet robot arm, and she knows Terezi loves being blind. The guilt is still there, though, especially since she never got to properly apologize to her. _Never got to, or refused?_ She doesn’t chase away the thought once it comes. She’s been feeling the weight of her past a lot recently.

She feels as though she might collapse, but she forces herself to keep walking deeper into the woods. Terezi always was more comfortable with her own company. It seems whenever she pairs up with someone else, she always ends up creating chaos or getting hurt. Or both, in Vriska’s case. She knows she’ll find her in these woods, not unlike the ones she grew up in. These trees are vibrant in a different way than the ones on Alternia are. Here, it looks as if someone turned up the saturation on everything a little. This planet was created to be paradise, she remembers, and brighter colors trigger a bigger dopamine release. It makes sense from a scientific perspective, but right now all it’s doing is hurting her eyes. She’d much prefer the pink and turquoise forests Terezi used to make her home in.

She finds her new hive easily; despite everything she’s gone through, Terezi’s tastes have remained more or less the same. It seems she still likes hanging things from tree branches, but at least she’s shrugged off her legislacerator heritage and exchanged lynched scalemates for colored glass and other baubles she likes. Vriska sees a lot of teal, a lot of red. They were always her favorites. She sees the occasional flash of blue among the leaves and almost fails to hold back a smile. Maybe she isn’t totally forgotten just yet.

She flies up to the door of Terezi’s treetop hive, not trusting her weary legs on the ladder. No time to get cold feet now. If she doesn’t knock on this door then she will never work up this courage again. She spent so many sweeps without her; if she goes even one more day she’ll break. Vriska suddenly becomes aware of the sorry state she’s in. Her hair is unwashed and lank, and her dark skin has lacked the shine characteristic of an adult troll for quite some time now. Her ribs poke through the dark material of her shirt; her god tier outfit got too small a long time ago. God, she must smell awful, especially to someone like Terezi. She hopes there’s somewhere to bathe nearby. When was the last time she bathed? The last time she ate? She doesn’t remember. Probably not a good sign. She takes a shaky breath and knocks on the door, and then waits. She hears her inside, and when she opens the door and looks at her again, Vriska almost shatters right there.

Terezi looks amazing. She’s molted too, and grown. She’s so much taller now, though still not as tsall as her. She could never catch up to her. It seems like it still holds true. In front of her, the one she loves the most drops her arms to her sides, her mouth hanging open. “...Vriska?”

She tries to smile at her, and imagines it comes off as more of a grimace. “Hey sis. I’m home.”

Vriska didn’t know what sort of reunion she was expecting. She feels like she’s about to cry, but she holds it in. If she starts up the waterworks now, they’ll both break down. Terezi puts a shaking hand on Vriska’s shoulder. It feels warm and heavy against her, and she unconsciously leans into her touch. It strikes her then that this is her first contact with another living person for sweeps. Her hand is burning against her, and she’s sure Terezi can feel her bones.

She smiles a little, and Vriska can hear the tremble in her voice when she speaks. “Do you wanna come in and talk for a while?”

She can only nod, and walks into Terezi’s hive. It’s homey, if it can be described like that. She has several piles in here of various things. Some scarves and stuffed toys are piled up in the main room. When Terezi shuts the door behind them, Vriska finally feels her knees buckle, and Terezi goes to catch her, throwing an arm around her thin waist and easing Vriska’s over her shoulders. “Hey, Vriska, it’s fine, let’s sit down.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m such a shit idiot.” The rambling begins as Terezi eases her down onto the pile. Vriska nestles against her, wrapping her arms around her waist. “I’m never leaving you again. I’m never leaving you again, Terezi. I can’t do that again.” She lets herself cry now. When did she become such a wriggler? She’s bawling like Tavros used to.

Terezi doesn’t seem to mind, running her fingers through Vriska’s tangled hair over and over. She’s trying to soothe her, she realizes. She never needed to be soothed before. “Yeah, we’ve all done some pretty shitty things. I’m just… I’m really glad to see you. We all thought you were dead. Have you seen anyone else?” Vriska shakes her head. “That’s okay, that’s fine. Let’s rest a while and then you can tell me all about it, okay?”  


Only then does Vriska realize how exhausted she is. Now that she is able to lay still, her body is quickly warming up, and with Terezi’s skin close to hers, she feels safe for the first time since she can remember. Her eyelids are drooping, and she knows if she tries to speak she’ll slur her words, but she speaks anyway. “Promise you’ll be there when I wake up?”  


A rare and uncharacteristic show of vulnerability from a girl wrought from blood and iron, but it’s not lost on Terezi. She clutches her tighter and settles deeper into the pile, resting her chin between Vriska’s long horns. “I promise I’m always gonna be there from now on, don’t worry. Go to sleep, dude.”  


“God I think I love you.”  


Terezi allows Vriska to rest against her softer body, her fingers finding their way into her hair again. “I knew that. I love you, too.”  


Vriska is asleep before the tears dry on her cheeks.


End file.
